The present invention relates to a refrigerating appliance with circulating air cooling, i.e. a refrigerating appliance in the housing of which an evaporator area and a cooling area for accommodating refrigerated goods are partitioned off from one another and the cooling area is cooled by cold air supplied from the evaporator area. In particular the invention relates to a refrigerating appliance with circulating air cooling which features two or more cooling areas partitioned off from each other.
If in such a refrigerating appliance the first cooling area lies between the evaporator area and the second cooling area, the cold air must be directed from the evaporator area on a supply path running along the first cooling area to the second cooling area. To be able to maintain the temperatures in the two cooling areas independently of each other, the supply channel of the second cooling area should be insulated from the first area, so that cold air flowing on the supply channel to the second cooling area does not also cool the first cooling area when not required to do so and thereby enters the second cooling area warmer than expected.
Conventionally such a supply channel is implemented by a pipe run in a wall of the refrigerator housing, which is embedded into insulating material of the wall. The extent of the pipe within the thickness of the wall must kept small to enable a sufficient thickness of insulation material to be also accommodated in the wall. In order to obtain a sufficient free cross-sectional surface of the pipe despite this, an elongated flat cross-sectional shape is therefore generally selected. The distance between this pipe and the inner skin of the wall must be large enough so that, if the wall is foam filled in the conventional manner to form an insulating layer, this foam can penetrate unhindered between the inner skin and the pipe to create an effective insulation therein. However the wider the pipe is, the greater is the distance of the pipe from the inner skin required for this. The result is that it must be that much closer to the outer skin and consequently the insulation of the supply channel from the surroundings of the appliance is that much worse. This is very disadvantageous since the air circulating in the supply channel is colder than the cooling areas themselves, so that in the insulation layer between it and the surroundings an especially large drop in temperature occurs and accordingly the heat inflow into the appliance at this point is especially great.
Naturally this heat inflow can be reduced by the thickness of the insulation layer being increased at least in the vicinity of the cool air supply channel, but this leads to a loss of usable volume in the cooling area past which the supply channel is routed.